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arXiv:quant-ph/9711065 · Physica D Nonlinear Phenomena

Why quantum bit commitment and ideal quantum coin tossing are impossible

Hoi-Kwong Lo, H.F. Chau

Published Sep 1, 1998• 152 citations
arXivHTMLPDF
DOI
10.1016/s0167-2789(98)00053-0

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Why quantum bit commitment and quantum coin tossing are impossible

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Why quantum bit commitment and ideal quantum coin tossing are impossible

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There had been well known claims of ``provably unbreakable'' quantum protocols for bit commitment and coin tossing. However, we, and independently Mayers, showed that all proposed quantum bit commitment (and therefore coin tossing) schemes are, in principle, insecure because the sender, Alice, can always cheat successfully by using an EPR-type of attack and delaying her measurements. One might wonder if secure quantum bit commitment and coin tossing protocols exist at all. Here we prove that an EPR-type of attack by Alice will, in principle, break {\em any} realistic quantum bit commitment and {\em ideal} coin tossing scheme. Therefore, provided that Alice has a quantum computer and is capable of storing quantum signals for an arbitrary length of time, all those schemes are insecure. Since bit commitment and coin tossing are useful primitives for building up more sophisticated protocols such as zero-knowledge proofs, our results cast very serious doubt on the security of quantum cryptography in the so-called ``post-cold-war'' applications.

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There had been well known claims of unconditionally secure quantum protocols for bit commitment. However, we, and independently Mayers, showed that all proposed quantum bit commitment schemes are, in principle, insecure because the sender, Alice, can almost always cheat successfully by using an Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) type of attack and delaying her measurements. One might wonder if secure quantum bit commitment protocols exist at all. We answer this question by showing that the same type of attack by Alice will, in principle, break any bit commitment scheme. The cheating strategy generally requires a quantum computer. We emphasize the generality of this ``no-go theorem'': Unconditionally secure bit commitment schemes based on quantum mechanics---fully quantum, classical or quantum but with measurements---are all ruled out by this result. Since bit commitment is a useful primitive for building up more sophisticated protocols such as zero-knowledge proofs, our results cast very serious doubt on the security of quantum cryptography in the so-called ``post-cold-war'' applications. We also show that ideal quantum coin tossing is impossible because of the EPR attack. This no-go theorem for ideal quantum coin tossing may help to shed some lights on the possibility of non-ideal protocols.

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We show that a secure quantum protocol for coin tossing exist. The existence of quantum coin tossing support the conjecture of D.Mayers [Phys.Rev.Lett. 78, 3414(1997)] that only asymmetrical tasks as quantum bit commitment are impossible.

arXiv:quant-ph/9706046•Jun 20, 1997•2 citations
There had been well known claims of ``provably unbreakable'' quantum protocols for bit commitment and coin tossing. However, we, and independently Mayers, showed that all proposed quantum bit commitment (and therefore coin tossing) schemes are, in principle, insecure because the sender, Alice, can always cheat successfully by using an EPR-type of attack and delaying her measurements. One might wonder if secure quantum bit commitment and coin tossing protocols exist at all. Here we prove that an EPR-type of attack by Alice will, in principle, break {\em any} realistic quantum bit commitment and {\em ideal} coin tossing scheme. Therefore, provided that Alice has a quantum computer and is capable of storing quantum signals for an arbitrary length of time, all those schemes are insecure. Since bit commitment and coin tossing are useful primitives for building up more sophisticated protocols such as zero-knowledge proofs, our results cast very serious doubt on the security of quantum cryptography in the so-called ``post-cold-war'' applications.
There had been well known claims of unconditionally secure quantum protocols for bit commitment. However, we, and independently Mayers, showed that all proposed quantum bit commitment schemes are, in principle, insecure because the sender, Alice, can almost always cheat successfully by using an Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) type of attack and delaying her measurements. One might wonder if secure quantum bit commitment protocols exist at all. We answer this question by showing that the same type of attack by Alice will, in principle, break any bit commitment scheme. The cheating strategy generally requires a quantum computer. We emphasize the generality of this ``no-go theorem'': Unconditionally secure bit commitment schemes based on quantum mechanics---fully quantum, classical or quantum but with measurements---are all ruled out by this result. Since bit commitment is a useful primitive for building up more sophisticated protocols such as zero-knowledge proofs, our results cast very serious doubt on the security of quantum cryptography in the so-called ``post-cold-war'' applications. We also show that ideal quantum coin tossing is impossible because of the EPR attack. This no-go theorem for ideal quantum coin tossing may help to shed some lights on the possibility of non-ideal protocols.